Saunteel Jenkins / Jarrad Henderson/Detroit Free Press

Andre Spivey / Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press

James Tate / Jarrad Henderson/Detroit Free Press

OK. I'm begging. I'm pleading. I am persistent in my urging Detroit's city leaders to start marching in front of the parade instead of following the band.

Mayor Dave Bing and the Detroit City Council have been a step behind for more than three years now. They have spent more time reacting to others' decisions than determining their own fate.

It's no wonder that the state -- and many Detroit residents -- don't believe the mayor when he says he has a plan and don't believe council members when they say they can keep the city from going over a fiscal cliff.

City residents, eager for change and a chance to elect a mayor not on the nightly news for sexting, voted in a former NBA All-Star turned businessman and five fresh faces as their top vote-getters.

Those six were expected to change the city's course and improve the city's reputation.

They were expected to lower taxes and tear down every abandoned building.

They were expected to put a cop on every corner and open as many community centers as liquor stores.

They were expected to be faster than speeding bullets, more powerful than locomotives, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Oh wait, that last part was Superman. But that's what people expected: the impossible.

What should have happened three and half years ago was: The new mayor and new council members should have entered office, seen how messed up Detroit's finances were and -- after screaming -- declared a fiscal emergency in December 2009 and announced major cuts.

Bing should have told the state to give him emergency management powers so he could make necessary adjustments to pension and health care costs.

Bing and the council -- together -- should have asked the state for $21 million, enough to clean up and maintain Belle Isle while they focused on the books. (The money would have come from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund that gave $21 million to the riverfront project because it deserved it.)

And Bing and the council -- as a team -- should have done it all before the Detroit Charter Commission completed its work and before anyone in Lansing could come up with an emergency manager law to replace the one voters struck down.

Instead, the mayor and the council decided to chart separate paths and, for a long time, operate the city like business as usual.

The mayor talked to the council through news conferences.

The council members chastised the mayor for talking to them in news conferences.

And, all the while, the city got closer and closer to that fiscal cliff.

So I'm urging them to do now what they should have done then -- the mayor and the Fab Five. I'm urging those five -- Charles Pugh, Gary Brown, Saunteel Jenkins, Andre Spivey and James Tate -- who came into office with no political baggage to do what voters wanted in 2009.

Those five, along with Councilman Ken Cockrel Jr. and the other council members -- even as they fight emergency management -- can come up with a plan for the emergency manager, a working document that includes a list of do's and don'ts and some history that he, or she, might appreciate.

And rather than walk at the back of the parade, complaining about what's happening in front and occasionally stepping in a little poop, they should lead in the ways they can with sound policy advice and information about Detroiters that only they can provide.

The more they lead in front rather than back, the sooner the EM can go and they can get back to business -- not as usual, but as should be expected by a tired constituency ready for change.